Pregnant pause...looking at the clerk with that, "you're just filling-in from the health and beauty-aids department, right?-look", to which she responded, after an awkwardly-long time, "Don't talk to the idiot."
We laughed - the communication-chasm had once-again been bridged - and me and my mum left the store.

Returning to the checkout island near the garden department, I asked the clerk, just after her shift-change, if the chrysanthemum I'd been permitted to leave on the counter while I finished shopping was anywhere around...I couldn't see it. Together we searched, and I spied it on the floor behind the counter.
"There it is!" I said.
"Oh, no," she said, "that's a mum."

(Pregnant pause...)

Pregnant pause...looking at the clerk with that, "you're just filling-in from the health and beauty-aids department, right?-look", to which she responded, after an awkwardly-long time, "Don't talk to the idiot."
We laughed - the communication-chasm had once-again been bridged - and me and my mum left the store.

A few days later, on a brilliant spring Sunday, I drove over to my parents' house. My folks are both retired, and I feel lucky to still have 'em around.

I parked up in front of their shady stoop, and noticed the first buttercups of spring glowing against the hill meadow behind the house. I saw Dad pull himself up from the beat-up old settle and reach his arm down for my mother to grab.

As I climbed the steps, they were both beaming. "Welcome, son!" said Dad.

I cracked a grin, and looked across to his left. "Happy Mother's Day, Mom! ...Look, I brought you a little something! A mum!"